in other news saffer quick vernon philander has taken 6 wickets against the kiwis. that puts him on 5 five wicket hauls in 6 games. i'm genuinely scared/thrilled about seeing him over here this summer.

He's basically Glenn McGrath's reincarnation - three inches outside off, on the seam, every ball. I predict that Pietersen runs down the pitch to him at least 10 times in the series.

Amused that Patel is the only English spinner to take a wicket so far. Maybe it's time to give Cook's offies a whirl too? Swann looks like a fading force, sadly. Desperately needs a bag out of somewhere.

Three matches in a row now. I blame Panesar. Or Broad for that stupid no ball. At least my betfair account has loads of money in it now thanks to the England batsmen's incompetence over the last few months.

no doubt about that. Maybe 'undeserving' is the wrong word, maybe 'worst' would be better, reflecting how there's not necessarily that's consistently better. I'm not sure how many other teams are so limited to excelling in certain conditions though. Even in Aus, where the results were phenomenal, the only time in which conditions were slightly against us we got blown away. MOAN.

The problem is with our batsmen. We can bowl on any deck in the world with any ball currently in use, what we can't do is bat against spin on slow, low wickets. Add to this a drop in confidence and energy, and strauss's less than clinical captaincy decisions and you end up with the cricketing equivalent of a 300 pound gorilla with a glass jaw.